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Austen comic books 2.0

By Deborah Yaffe, Mar 20 2017 01:00PM

Given the ubiquity of comic books based on Jane Austen’s novels, I suppose it’s not surprising that we’ve now moved on to Version 2.0: comic books based on spinoffs and adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels.

And so it is that we will soon have a comic book based on Clueless, the justly beloved 1995 film that updated Emma to high school in Beverly Hills. In a further meta twist, the comic book will be cowritten by Amber Benson, a one-time actress (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) who, as a teenager, auditioned unsuccessfully for a role in the movie.

Rather than retelling the story of the film, the comic book version imagines how the characters from Clueless would cope with senior year at Bronson Alcott High School. It’s not clear from the Boom! Studios press release how many books are planned for the series, but the first one debuts in August.

As I’ve written before, I’m not entirely on board with the Jane Austen comic book thing, but the pop-culture sensibility of Clueless seems like a perfect fit.